Eye of a Rook

by Josephine Taylor

  Duncan was absorbed. Alice refocused on the TV. Had the buffalo survived?

  It was raptors now. Monkeys screeched and flung themselves from tree to tree and the two birds circled above. ‘They are watching and waiting,’ said the voice-over.

  Was the rift between them solely because of her illness? The new, pained Alice questioned all that had gone before. Suggested there was a flaw in the foundation of their relationship. Wondered if the baby she had imagined, it seemed like years ago, would have been a mistake, anyway. But could she trust the thoughts and feelings of the new Alice? Was she a superior version of herself – more insightful, more mature – or a hag who no longer saw the good in her husband? Who now saw the world itself through a glass, darkly? What did she make of herself? Of their marriage? Obscure doubts that had hidden within the folds of her pain, only to emerge now, as she tried to translate the language of her suffering.

  ‘But the raptors have a strategy.’ The narrator’s voice again. ‘While the monkeys, from their swaying seat in the tree canopy, watch the male disappear, his mate flies in behind unnoticed. Ready to swoop.’

  Alice closed her eyes.

  From the moment of meeting, Duncan had provided an answer to her world. And she had always believed that he looked to her as some kind of compass. That life made more sense for both of them in each other’s company. For what other reason had they married? She remembered their early melding and nights when he’d recounted his childhood troubles: his mother’s many hospital absences as her body was remade; the loss of his father just as Ena was returned to them, fixed, after a fashion. Alice had held him as he cried, felt his need for her in those boyish tears.

  But when she looked back through the eyes of her new self, she read a different story. A young woman in the grip of an older, seemingly smarter, man. A woman who had bent herself into the form defined by his interests – his beliefs. Her thoughts and hopes fenced. The compromises made to bring him pleasure a slow whittling away at herself.

  She allowed it to return: the end of that terrible phone conversation with her mother, years ago; the words she had tried to keep at arm’s length ever since. Recalled the phone in the corridor of the share house and the old stained-glass front door through which afternoon sun had poured. Her body bathed in colour and youthful ire.

  You understand what I mean, Alice. Duncan took advantage … Nineteen! Why didn’t he go after someone his own age?

  Why should he?

  Alice looked back at her younger self. Realised that Joan’s dismay only fused her more closely to Duncan. Understood that all of Joan’s misgivings about Duncan – why he was drawn to someone impressionable, naive … why she herself responded – only drove mother and daughter further apart.

  She remembered her own righteous anger that day. Her digs at Joan acting the analyst, and then, broaching the news. Anyway, he’s asked me to move in.

  There’d been a hush. A pause when she’d wondered what her mother was thinking. Heartbeats when she’d hoped this new status might change things.

  But – and her mother’s words had come in a rush – Oh, Alice, I’m worried about his hold over you. She’d gone on, Joan, said something about Duncan himself and who he was in the world, about what he was, grandiosity and needing admiration and excessively demanding flowing like something viscous through the phone line. And then, then, that quiet sentence, Sometimes I look at him and think …

  Alice had made her voice weary, she remembered. Ironic. What do you think, Mum? The tears that hid behind.

  I wonder whether he is a narcissist – the personality disorder, I mean.

  There, they were out. The horrible words a diagnosis. A judgement. And, just as momentously, her decision had been made: she would say yes. She would move in, make Duncan her family. Maybe Joan would come around, she’d reassured herself. But they never had that make-up conversation. And Alice didn’t know if that was because Joan felt too embarrassed, or because she had not come around. Would never come around.

  Was it a betrayal to recall the words now? To admit their possibility?

  Narcissist. Her bloody know-it-all mother.

  Personality disorder. The words that rankled and rumbled, growing more potent with each unspoken year.

  Despite their new warmth, she wanted to ring Joan and accuse her, force her to carry some blame. Tell her mother that she could no longer wholly believe in her own husband. That she doubted their ability to recreate that space in which they had affirmed their love and desire. That she might never again trust the embrace that initiated this horror.

  Her face was wet. She blotted the tears with her sweater and opened her eyes to a burst of motion.

  ‘Look!’ The raptor had grasped a small monkey from the treetops. ‘There is no escape now.’ The bird flew with her prey to an outcrop of rocks, then thrust large talons into the belly. Her wings were outstretched; she raised her proud head and scanned the sky.

  ‘Isn’t she beautiful?’ Duncan’s voice was resonant with awe. She loved that about him: his eager curiosity about the world.

  She loved him.

  What if this disorder were to disappear tomorrow? Would the crippling doubt in that love reveal itself as a chimera? An effect of pain? Of despair? Surely she could – no, should – work harder to safeguard their marriage. To hold onto the remnants of what had been between them. She called back the memories. The week away last year that had shown her something different: their love and the thought of a living proof of that bond. When she recovered, they would return to that point – even plan that future. They would see the softness in each other and laugh together again.

  It had been good. She must remember.

  The raptor’s cape-like wings shielded the dead monkey from the view of other predators. ‘Mantling,’ the narrator pronounced. Alice could see the monkey’s milky underside. The scattered splotches of brilliant red. Her skin prickled, top to toe. She could feel the pecks to her belly, the tearing at her innards. Glistening membranes ripping.

  She moved closer to Duncan and he put his arm around her. She leaned into his long body. Became heavy and slack. Ah, here it came: that tiny, sedating pill; that nightly bulldozer. Her eyelids dropped. A glowing afterimage: the monkey’s white belly and the raptor’s pale eye, the round absence at its core. Then the heavy surge rolled over her body and she fell into that black hole … going, going …

  ‘Alice.’ Her shoulder gripped. Shaken. ‘Alice, come on. Time for bed.’

  She lifted her eyelids. Saw a shadow hovering over her, its wings darker than the night-filled room. Mantling. Was it shielding her? Preparing to eat her?

  She couldn’t move her arms or legs. Couldn’t fight the shadow, or the heaviness. The blackness came again and carried her away.

  CHAPTER 12

  LONDON, JUNE–SEPTEMBER 1865

  She is not a topic of conversation. Despite her beauty, despite that elusive quality that pleases the eye and fosters the affection of both men and women, despite the care with which she listens to them, gently drawing from them their apprehensions and attending to their joys, rendering these fashionable people deeper and more true, despite all of this, she is no longer discussed. It is as if she has been forgotten by society, has never even existed, after being absent for—what, how long? Nine weeks. Only nine weeks.

  Is it diffidence on society’s part? Concern for her, for him? Or simply a determination to build an unbreachable wall against something that has not been explained—that can never be explained? Do they sense disorder and pull away from its contagion?

  Emily isn’t a topic of conversation; nevertheless, when he is not with her, she is all he can see or hear, and he must struggle to banish her beloved form from his mind, wrestle with the urge to leap to his feet and summon his carriage so he can race home to her. Even at this instant, on this fussy society evening, when he looks at the people who surround him, it is not them he sees, but Emmie in all her guises: it is her intelligent forehead he finds in the Duchess o
f Aldington’s arch brow, her confident bearing that straightens General Leyton’s stoop, her pliant willingness that softens Lady Darch’s intimidating bosom, her musical laugh that overlays de Courtenay’s pompous posturing. Even in her absence, Emmie obscures them all.

  She has turned away from society—withdrew at first reluctantly and with tears of disappointment, then deliberately, with an air of quiet stubbornness. The debutante ball in April, the celebration of Cissy’s coming out: that was her last public appearance. There she sat in one of the nests of chairs edging the ballroom, battling her body, her face drained with effort. Only he and Beatrice, whose worried eyes met his, really knew with what pain she must be dealing to be unable to respond with her usual kindness, her winning interest in those around her. She rose, tried to speak with other scattered guests, her weary shoulders curling; she hovered in the corner of the hall, face wan. Then Cissy’s plump body whipped past his own chair, was whirled about the dance floor, her face shining out at her admirers, and when he turned to look again, Emily had vanished.

  It was in the chill air of the balcony that he had finally found her, leaning over the balustrade—her shoulders shaking, her hot breath clouding the air—and he ’d gathered her to him, smoothed the lines of pain that scored her forehead and bracketed her mouth, and whispered words of comfort while she whimpered like a small animal, holding the worst of her distress inside, for Cissy’s sake.

  Come, he ’d said. Let’s take you home.

  And now? Now he must attend these society dinners and balls and daytime jaunts alone, at Emmie’s insistence, even as they mean nothing to him without her. For she is concerned with their place in society, she says, and he knows this to be true, but still he wonders what she does when he is not home with her, wonders how it is to be free of his presence and the weight it seems to place on her. And so they continue the illusion that hers is a passing indisposition, even as it drags on week after week, even as she disregards elegant carriages outside their front door and the calling cards that are left with bewildered servants, Millie wringing her apron in uncertainty and dismay.

  And when he rushes home from these interminable gatherings, eager to see his Emmie again? Then he finds the stranger who, it seems, has taken her place.

  The horse’s hooves might be rattling, the reins flapping, London’s streets whizzing by in a blur as they race along the Strand, but he himself feels like a wheel grinding a stationary, ever-deepening rut. It’s been two years now on Common Pleas and suddenly he feels fed up. Heartily sick of it all. The legal institution has become too familiar, with its tangle of corruption and conservatism, each day bogged down in endless, pointless ceremonies, while he winces at the lack of respect for jury members amongst his fellows, the bullying of clients and witnesses—the badgering that twists their words and traps them in contradictions, until they stutter into silence, twisting their hands in confusion. It’s a game, he sees now, a never-ending, ham-fisted game, and sometimes he wants to throw his own hands in the air at the inefficiency, at the sheer waste of it all, even as he learns the rules and plays to win.

  Would the Queen’s Bench be any better? More purposeful, more … productive? He’s visited the Old Bailey, seen the goings-on: the charges of larceny, rape, murder and so on—more interesting, by far, than disputes about property and tussles over debt, as well as graver in effect. But the passage of justice is no less flawed in the criminal courts, surely, if sometimes defence counsel is not even permitted, if in serious crimes the accused cannot defend themselves, or question their sentence?

  The cab wobbles, slows, then pulls to a near halt. Dust swirls over the doors and into the cab, billowing against him, and he pulls the kerchief from his breast pocket to shield his face, knowing that by tonight his hair will be full of the grit and grime of the city, the creamy linen at his wrists filthy with it. Once, he would have anticipated cleaning up properly at the courts, but he knows too well now how unlikely that is: towels, combs, even water, are scarce in the robing room and the place stinks like an overflowing cesspool.

  The cab driver wheezes behind him and clears his throat with a hacking cough. Wellington Street: that’s why they’ve slowed. It’s humming, as always, clouds of dirt rolling from beneath the feet, hooves and wheels destined for Waterloo Bridge, that stream of traffic flowing against his, ’buses jamming up behind and around their cab. But they are still moving at least, and there is the reason for the delay: a ’bus horse upended in the middle of the crossing, legs flailing and the driver taking to it with a whip, the whistle and crack arriving moments after the downward sweep of the man’s arm. Arthur winces at the casual cruelty—the pointless attack on a helpless beast—but then he hardens himself. What difference could his concern possibly make, anyway?

  Lately it seems to him that London is full of them: helpless beings he is unable to help. Look at the poor, those downtrodden by the classes above them; what justice is in the criminal courts for those with no money to pay, no access to some kind of public defence? Does punishment benefit anyone turned criminal through poverty and circumstance? Those narrow, dark cells in Newgate Gaol have stayed with him, along with the yard in which the prisoners must take exercise. Exercise! The sunken enclosure is like a long chimney and the men trudge at its shadowed base as if they are turning the workings of Hell. He’s witnessed a hanging, too, heard the crowd in the street roar and bay like animals as the skinny man jangled and twitched into death. Afterwards, Arthur walked away as quickly as he could, as if he could leave the image behind.

  Maybe it’s time to reassess. As a barrister he can do little to help these unfortunate wretches, but as a politician he might have some decisive effect, influence the will of Parliament and push for legislation that might aid London’s sorry, heaving mass of humanity. He will speak with Father again, see if he has suggestions about a seat—though Father has grown stiffer still over the last year, his ideas calcifying … Anyway, there will be time for talk once Emmie is at Herdley and he going to and fro, balancing his different, disparate worlds. Only two more weeks and, pray God, the sweet air and Bea’s ministrations might alleviate the pitiful torment of his wife.

  The air is full of the Thames’s stench; it is only their passage along the Strand that whisks into the cab a semblance of freshness at which he sucks, cursing the heat and stink of London in the summer. Why, even the trees look miserable, their leaves blackened; even the feathers of the birds perched on the statue of Charles I seem to droop despondently. And he knows his cynicism, even despair—the way he sees his work, the city and the plight of its people—is coloured by the helplessness he feels every time he thinks of Emily. But this makes no difference to his mood, to his sense that everything is hopeless. Sullied. And it seems to him, as they rattle their slower way down Parliament Street towards Westminster Hall, that something vital has withdrawn from him over the last months. Faith in the legal system. Perhaps faith altogether. The worship at All Saints seems a dream to him now, his gratitude for his fortunate life and, most of all, for the miracle of his wife, premature, some kind of punishment. God’s joke on him, his pleasure, his celebratory pride.

  The cab is slowing, pulling up at the water trough in New Palace Yard, and he must remove himself, busy himself with clients, carrying Emmie’s pain about with him like a weight he cannot put aside. Will not put aside.

  Oh, if only he could help her!

  It will be late by the time he gets to chambers, but there are no clients until the afternoon and he must speak with Mrs Wilson, still new to the job, see how she is coping with a mistress effectively absent, ask how she is managing the preparations for his wife’s journey to Hierde House, all this before Emily and her mother return from the consultation—yet another physician specialising in “women’s complaints”, yet more pills and potions. Thank goodness the housekeeper was engaged before Emmie became so ill and that she has taken it upon herself to make sensible decisions without troubling them. Without troubling his wife.

  He hears
the roar as he leaves the library, another as he trudges up the stairs. When the wind is in the right direction, they can hear them from Regent’s Zoo, those exotic lions; picture them pacing behind their bars, demanding meat, their claws and teeth sharp and keen.

  He goes through the bedroom, quietly enters the dark chamber beyond, now claimed as hers; eyes the narrow bed that has replaced, for her, their cosy nest with its tousled bedclothes and his ready embrace. I must be alone, she ’d said. I have hardly the strength to be in my own body. And when he ’d entered this chamber one day without knocking, thinking to ease her loneliness, her hands had made fluttering movements like birds trying to take flight, and she ’d blurted out that she couldn’t tolerate the presence of another person, their unspoken expectations … and he knew that she meant him. That he was another person. She cried and apologised, over and over, as he made to approach her, as he backed out quickly without a word.

  It is damp here, the coals cold in their hearth. The new couch is naked save for a pair of lady’s drawers strewn over it, legs without feet. Emily retreats to this so-called spinal couch regularly now, clutching at herself, and he can’t help but resent the object for the time she shares with it, the tears she weeps on it that should be shed in his presence. Was purchasing the couch a sound decision? How much of the back pain that has now joined the list of her other, private, pains is a true part of that complaint and how much simply a result of the way she must sit now—when she has to sit, for convention’s sake—her hips forward and posture slumped? Does it benefit her to closet herself away from the natural light, the busyness of the everyday?